by Gwen Moffat
*
She went to Burblethwaite at seven o’clock. When she’d last seen him a few hours ago he’d been drained of vitality; now he looked like an old man. They sat over an electric heater and drank tea which she made, having brought milk across from the farm; he was beyond any domestic activity. What on earth could they talk about while they waited for the telephone call? Agonisingly, for her, he started to talk about Caroline and when she got over her initial shock she realised he was telling her what Caroline thought of New York, Tokyo, Cairo. He rambled on about the girl’s friends among airline pilots and travelling executives. He was very proud of her social life. But at length his reminiscences ran out and he fell silent. Miss Pink tried to make conversation about the cottage, the dale, television. He wasn’t listening. He asked, with a flicker of hope: ‘How soon will they release her?’
She made an effort to be practical. ‘The person who picks up the money will have to contact the one who’s holding Caroline. If they communicate by phone, then she could call you as soon as she’s free.’
‘Yes.’ He was expressionless. ‘She’d do that.’
Fear held their minds and through the closed window they heard the sound of the flooded beck. Miss Pink hoped that there’d be no landslide in the Throat—for surely it was quite impossible that the drop would be in Sandale. That was too near home.
They talked desultorily of a dozen subjects, Miss Pink initiating them and words emerging from Harper’s mouth like drips from a faulty tap until she asked suddenly: ‘Why don’t we start making a list of the numbers on those banknotes, then you can go to the police when Caroline’s safe, and they can try to catch the gang by way of the money?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
His face flushed with anger. ‘Because I say so.’
‘It’s hot money,’ Miss Pink said.
The silence stretched. His face was no longer hopeless but hard and stubborn.
‘Did you rob a bank?’
He looked at her without fear but with no sign of capitulation. ‘It’s money,’ he said. ‘It’s the price of my girl’s life.’ She nodded agreement. ‘I’ll tell you something, miss.’ He leaned forward. ‘No one died for that money; you’re not having to handle stuff with blood on it, don’t worry.’ He was bitter.
‘I’m not thinking about myself. I was wondering if we could get some clue to the kidnapper by way of the money; obviously he knew you’d got it.’
‘He didn’t know. He guessed. The police are keeping an eye on me. Race tracks, you see; they watch everybody.’
‘The local police?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I see. So you think the information leaked down to Wren by way of the local bobby?’
‘That looks like the score.’ He’d sunk back into apathy. Suddenly the telephone rang, startling them. It was only seven-thirty. After the first shock Miss Pink thought that it was logical that the criminals wouldn’t keep to schedule.
This time she didn’t go to the phone but waited, concentrating her forces, trying to eliminate everything from her mind but the job in hand: to obey instructions and absorb every associated detail—like the timbre of a voice.
‘He wants to speak to you.’ Harper’s voice was toneless. He was holding out the receiver. She stood up.
The instrument was slightly damp. ‘Miss Pink here.’
‘You’ve got the money?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go to Carnthorpe and take the road to the pass under Whirl Howe. Got that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Turn round at the car park at the top of the pass and come back the same way. At the second gate on the left, turn into the forestry and drive on the main track about half a mile—don’t turn off nowhere—till you come to a shed in a big space. There’s a row of fire beaters. Leave the money under the beaters, turn round and go home. Repeat that.’
She did so.
‘You’ll be under surveillance at intervals. If you see any cars, don’t trouble remembering the number plates; they’re false. And don’t make a slip. Harper stays at home. Got that?’
‘Yes.’
‘You got your car with you now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Leave right away.’ The line clicked and the dialling tone began.
‘Give me a pencil,’ Miss Pink said, holding a scratch pad and looking round.
‘There’s one by the directory. What did he say? Where are you going?’
She wrote down the instructions. ‘I’m leaving this here. It’s up to you to tell the police if anything goes wrong. If I can’t get back for any reason then I’ll ring you.’ She wrote his number on the pad and tore off the page. ‘Let’s get the case in my car and I’ll be off.’
*
She drove down the track and across the bridge. There were no lights anywhere except behind her in Burblethwaite; others were hidden by barns or thick curtains. She started down the lane, her windscreen wipers clacking busily.
As she drove she wondered where the waiting cars would be—or was that a blind? She thought that where this kind of activity was concerned, as few people as possible would be involved. The Lindbergh kidnapping had been the work of one man, and only two had been convicted in the McKay case. She remembered grimly that those victims had died. She was glad she hadn’t asked the caller to furnish proof that Caroline was still alive. Harper had only that hope to sustain him.
She passed the entrance to Storms’ drive and changed down for the bend. Drops from the trees drummed on the roof. After High Hollins’ gate there was water across the road and she took it carefully, praying.
For the next few hundred yards the road ran straight, with the meadows on the left which must be flooded; several inches had seeped through the wall to cover the tarmac. In her lights the long raised footway with its wooden railing gleamed wetly, then the rock wall of the Throat showed naked above the road and the tarmac was clear again.
The gorge was about a mile in length and the road curved tortuously. There were fallen stones on it, as Arabella had said, and as she came over incipient brows and the headlights dipped and swung on the right-hand bends, they showed her the river, seemingly on the same level as the highway, but it was no longer a river; it was a plunging mass of white water, shocking in its elemental power. You felt the very earth couldn’t stand against it; that at any moment the whole gorge—crags, banks and hanging woods—would collapse like sand and slip into this tearing flood.
Suddenly she was calm. She changed gear carefully on the bends, never getting into top, not hearing the changes and the acceleration because the world held no other sound but the roar of water. And then she came to several big rocks in the road and could not pass. She stopped, put her handbrake on hard and, leaving the engine running, got out.
She had on an anorak but no waterproofs. She’d put up her hood but it was wrenched back immediately by the wind. Spray and rain came in waves and her spectacles streamed. There was one moment of stupefaction engendered by the noise and then she disregarded it, wiping her thumbs over her glasses to see her way to the rocks.
She had the pattern of them clear. If she moved one on the left, the river side, she could squeeze past; if she cleared the way on the safer side, she had more work to do. The headlights shone on water, wet tarmac and the rock.
It was too big to lift. She bent and got both hands underneath. It rolled over and she followed, shuffling. The camber of the road favoured her. It rolled again and stopped. She wiped her glasses and paused, listening to other rolling sounds under the sound of water: it was boulders being battered down the river bed by the current.
She gave another heave, putting all her weight behind it, and the rock toppled over and vanished without splash or sound into the foam.
She sat in the car breathing hard and drying her spectacles on her handkerchief. Then she put the car in gear and, with her offside wheels grazing the remaining rocks, crept through the gap, her body pressed against her door in an in
effectual but instinctive cringe away from the deep.
At the end of the gorge there was more water across the road but then it took a slightly higher line and she had a clear run to Carnthorpe, passing the occasional light in cottage windows. It was curious to think of people sitting behind the curtains reading, sewing, watching television, knowing nothing of the bizarre business of the little car whose engine they heard going past their windows. But who did speculate on the horror that might exist on the other side of a glass screen?
Carnthorpe gleamed wet and empty and the lights served only to emphasise the abandonment of the streets to the rain. Somewhere at this moment the naturalists would be listening to the lichenologist. Somewhere Caroline was—waiting? Somewhere Caroline was. And somewhere: in a stationary car between street lights, in a dark yard, in the back of an empty car park, were eyes watching her pass? How did they know her car? Wren would have told them, she chided herself; she was fabricating bogies.
She took the road to the pass and after a mile or so of farmland and hardwoods, the ground started to rise and the forests began. Occasionally cars passed in the other direction, they and Miss Pink dipping their lights automatically. She felt a sense of comradeship with these unknown, unseen drivers who kept within the law, until she remembered that the criminals would dip their headlights too.
She did not know the Lakes well enough to identify the gateway as she approached from the bottom but there were very few, and about a mile from the top of the pass she started to look out for entrances, and when one appeared she tried to pierce the blackness outside her lights to discern a gleam of metal, but she saw no other car waiting, neither there, nor at the next entrance. Then she ran into cloud and dipped her lights. The gradient eased, she passed a big parking sign and put out her indicator.
At the top of the pass there were broad spaces on either side. She eased along, watching for the left-hand one. Here it was, the gravel entrance scarcely discernible against grass that was colourless in the mist-diffused light. She turned in but, not wanting to lose the way out again, went round on a hard lock and came back to the road immediately. If other cars were parked there, she couldn’t see them; only the mist drifted through her beams.
She stopped momentarily and doused her lights to make sure nothing was coming, then she started back the way she had come.
She ran down the road carefully, watching for the first entrance. She passed it, came out of the cloud, realised it was dropping, and rolled on to the second gateway.
The forestry track was surfaced with chippings which were soft under her wheels. She hoped that she wouldn’t get bogged down but reckoned that she was near enough to walk now. Half a mile, the voice on the telephone had said. She guessed that she was not alone in this section of the forest. Someone was listening to the sound of her engine; someone was waiting near the hut by the fire beaters. Now it showed in the lights: a small wooden bothy with a tin roof gleaming, and beside it: the rack of beaters. There was a turning circle and the track divided into three.
She turned and nosed back to the hut. She stopped the engine and got out.
The forest was alive with the soughing of the fir trees. The rain seemed less heavy than it had been at the lower altitude. She opened the rear door and dragged out the suitcase. She put it beside the beaters, returned to the car and drove back to the road.
There were lights coming up the hill from the direction of Carnthorpe. She was exhausted and hardly concentrating, except that she remembered to dip for the approaching traffic. She wondered how soon they would hear from Caroline.
*
Back in Burblethwaite they waited for the telephone to ring and talked as one does in bivouacs during a storm or waiting for the stretcher beside a corpse. Pondering the number of people who might have known that George Harper possessed money, if only temporarily, Miss Pink said: ‘If anyone had suspicions about you, they’d have deepened when Caroline arrived. They didn’t know she was your daughter presumably, and an expensive mistress implied that you were rich yourself.’
He nodded. ‘I never meant her to come here. She turned up sudden like. You see, she doesn’t know—’ He looked away, his fingers plucking at the cover of his chair.
‘She was too well-dressed,’ Miss Pink mused.
‘I took her to Paris when I was flush,’ he recalled dreamily. ‘It was a holiday for both of us. I gave her the Lotus too. I don’t much care for money, myself, but I like to give Caroline things.’
She had no comment to make on this. After a while she looked at her watch and remarked that she would have to go to Sandale House or Rumney would start to worry. Harper, who had been quiet for a while, agreed.
‘You don’t have to come back,’ he told her.
‘I’ll come back; I’ll bring a sleeping-bag. . . .’
‘Then you’d have to tell Rumney.’
‘I would tell him where I am; I don’t have to tell him why.’
In the circumstances the last part of this was untrue but they both knew it would be unbearable for him to wait on his own for a telephone call which might not come. She looked at him thoughtfully, trying to think of a good reason to give to Rumney for spending the night at Burblethwaite and at that point there was a knock on the door. Harper’s drawn face, for one moment, was suffused with joy, until he realised that Caroline wouldn’t knock.
‘You answer it,’ he said.
It was Rumney. He looked worried and sounded jolly and artificial. ‘Heard you come back some time ago,’ he said, peering past her at Harper, then walking in without invitation. ‘’Evening, George. . . .’ He looked closely at the other man. ‘Something’s wrong.’
Miss Pink stood there in consternation. All Harper’s suffering was in his eyes and now he dropped his head in his hands and groaned. Rumney looked from Miss Pink to the door, shocked, and torn between his indelicacy at witnessing another man’s collapse and the need to share Miss Pink’s responsibility with her. She was looking at the telephone.
‘Can I do anything?’ he asked.
‘It’s George’s problem,’ she said meaningly.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Harper said.
‘It’s not been very long,’ she reminded him. ‘it’s not two hours yet.’
‘He’s had time to ring the others; he’s passed a dozen kiosks by now.’
‘Consideration for people’s feelings isn’t one of their finer points,’ Miss Pink said, and cursed herself for the pomposity.
Rumney shifted his feet and she motioned to a chair. He sat down quietly, watching Harper.
‘She won’t come back,’ Harper said.
‘No!’ It was wrenched from her, and then she realised it could be taken for agreement. ‘Perhaps the fellow they sent hasn’t found the right place; he could have got lost in the forest.’ Harper said nothing. ‘Tell Zeke,’ she pleaded.
‘You tell him.’
So she told him. It didn’t take long; the facts were simple and sparse. All the horror had been in the waiting—since one o’clock yesterday afternoon for Harper. When she finished, with the information that they were now waiting for the telephone to ring, Rumney was harrowed and speechless. At length he suggested that she return to Sandale House while he spent the night at Burblethwaite. She could tell his mother merely that he was keeping Harper company. ‘Mother won’t question it,’ he assured her.
Eventually she said goodnight to Harper and went out. It was raining. Rumney came with her to the car and sat in the passenger’s seat.
‘Don’t leave him for long,’ she urged.
‘I’m just going back. Do you think she’s alive?’
‘God knows . . . and her abductor.’
‘When do we give up hoping and tell the police?’
‘This is the worst moment of all,’ she admitted. ‘At least, before, we were in the hands of the kidnapper, doing what he told us to do. Now we don’t know whether we’re on our own or not. If we knew she was dead we should tell them immediately; there’s no
doubt about that. But if she’s alive, could telling them jeopardise her safety? Suppose for some reason they’re still holding her, suppose the man who was meant to pick up the money has had an accident: is in hospital or even dead? If we told the police, and the search started for Wren tonight, it could be on the radio tomorrow morning, and then they might kill her. In any case,’ she added angrily, ‘what do we lose by not telling them? The gang gets away, that’s all: better a number of guilty men escape than an innocent person dies—isn’t that the foundation of British justice?’ She was bitter. ‘I’m not telling them tonight. You won’t either, not after an hour with Harper.’
Chapter Fourteen
Miss Pink woke to knocking, a flood of light, and Arabella standing against the sunshine, her dark little face harassed, a cup of tea in her hand. ‘Zeke told me,’ she said. ‘No one’s phoned; no one at all. What are we going to do? Oh, God, what a way to wake anyone!’
‘No harm done.’ Miss Pink was equable, sipping her tea and getting the feel of the day. A robin was singing above the noise of the beck.
‘That poor man,’ Arabella said. ‘I can’t believe it’s happened. I suppose it’s true—Caroline couldn’t be playing some ghastly trick?’
Miss Pink thought of Peta’s murder and the blackmail. ‘No,’ she said, and knew it was the end of that possibility. ‘It’s true.’
‘Where do you think she—? Where would they take her?’
‘The police will look for her car.’
‘Zeke brought George over for breakfast. That man didn’t eat yesterday!’
‘I know; I couldn’t get him to eat.’
*
Harper, seated at the breakfast table, was, as she’d expected to find him; dull, shocked, hopeless: an automaton eating what was put before him and saying nothing. Rumney took her aside and said that he’d sent for the doctor. ‘He didn’t sleep all night,’ he told her, indicating Harper. ‘Quentin will give him a sedative, I expect; he can sleep in my room.’
‘Someone ought to be at Burblethwaite in case the phone rings.’